Dog left in car out­side su­per­mar­ket

350 com­plaints

Out­raged an­i­mal lovers have voiced their dis­gust af­ter a dog was left in a car in the scorch­ing mid­day heat in Ash­ford.

The dog was spot­ted by Sin­gle­ton res­i­dent Yolanda Barker on Mon­day in the car park of Sains­bury’s su­per­mar­ket, in Si­mone Weil Av­enue, at 12.30pm – when the tem­per­a­ture was around 20 de­grees centi­grade.

Mrs Barker said: “The win­dow was open slightly, so ob­vi­ously the owner was aware that it was a hot day. But open­ing the win­dow a bit isn’t enough.”

Mrs Barker re­ported it to the store’s cus­tomer ser­vice desk, who put a tan­noy an­nounce­ment ask­ing the driver to re­turn to their ve­hi­cle.

“In fair­ness, the dog wasn’t distressed or pant­ing. But I was hot in my car, so I know the dog must have been,” Mrs Barker added. “The car was parked in a dis­abled bay but the timer had not been set, so we don’t know how long the dog had been in the car. There is no shad­ing in that part of the car park.

Mrs Barker and her hus­band, Peter, waited by the car for about 20 min­utes un­til they had to leave but no one re­turned dur­ing that pe­riod.

She added: “It makes you think why they even have a dog if they’re just go­ing to leave it in the car. This is such an easy thing to avoid.

A Sains­bury’s spokesman said: “Hav­ing spo­ken to the store’s man­ager, our col­leagues in store were not in­formed that a dog was in the car. In­stead, they were sim­ply asked to ask the car’s owner to re­turn to their ve­hi­cle.

“Had our col­leagues known a dog had been left unat­tended in the car they would have made ev­ery ef­fort to find the owner and ask them to re­turn to their ve­hi­cle.”

A Kent Po­lice spokesman said: “Po­lice will re­spond to calls about dogs be­ing left in cars and will, if nec­es­sary, break into a car to res­cue a dog in th­ese cir­cum­stances if they are un­able to trace the owner.

“Dog own­ers have a le­gal duty of care for their an­i­mal and can be pros­e­cuted for putting their pets at risk.” The RSPCA has hit out at own­ers who leave their pets in hot cars af­ter two dogs died over the week­end.

The char­ity’s con­trol cen­tre re­ceived around 350 com­plaints and con­cerned calls last week­end about an­i­mals be­ing trapped in ve­hi­cles dur­ing the blaz­ing heat, 70 of which re­lated to the South East.

A seven-year old fe­male Stafford­shire bull ter­rier died af­ter be­ing left in a car out­side a pub while the own­ers had Sun­day lunch in Brad­ford, West York­shire and in Bury, Greater Manch­ester, a two-year old rot­tweiler cross was pulled dead out of a hot car out­side their owner’s home.